Review acknowledges that WMD claims were wrong

By not admitting errors, the US President avoids criticism and the appearance of weakness, writes Dana Milbank.

In deciding to back an independent review of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President George Bush is acknowledging what he cannot say publicly: that something was seriously wrong with the allegations he used to take the United States to war in Iraq.

Almost everybody in a position to know has agreed that a huge mistake has been made. "We were almost all wrong," David Kay, the former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, testified last week.

Republican Trent Lott, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday: "In this case, there's no question there was an intelligence failure, in some form or another."

"Clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war" is how Charles Duelfer, Dr Kay's replacement, put it a few months ago when he noted "the apparent absence of existing weapons stocks".

The White House said on Sunday that Mr Bush would sign an executive order to establish the review. But the President and top White House officials remain resolutely agnostic in their public utterances. "I want to know the facts," Mr Bush said on Friday, not admitting to any flaw in the weapons allegations. "And I want to know exactly. I want to compare what the ISG (Iraq Survey Group) finds with what we thought was going in."

Why the reluctance to say what appears increasingly obvious? The tactic may appear to be obtuse, but there is a real strategy behind the Bush response - and one that has been used before, to great effect.

Bush aides have learned that admitting error projects weakness and invites more abuse. Conversely, by postponing an acknowledgement - possibly beyond election day - the White House is generating a fog of uncertainty around Dr Kay's findings, and potentially softening a harsh public judgement.

Of course, Mr Bush and his top aides are aware - and acknowledge as much in private - that Dr Kay's remarks have dispelled hope that the intelligence might prove correct. While some in the White House favour having Mr Bush admit publicly that the intelligence was flawed, a high-ranking Republican source said such a step was not yet contemplated.

Instead, for the White House, agreeing to an external review - which Dr Kay advocates - amounts to a tacit acknowledgement of reality without an admission of error. Indeed, having a commission could postpone Mr Bush's need to admit error indefinitely; in that sense, it is something of a tactical retreat.

Nobody expects any hard conclusions to be reached before the November 2 election - either by congressional probes or an independent inquiry - on what went wrong with the intelligence.

Republican Porter Goss, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former CIA case officer, said partisan politics would make it impossible to get any real work done before the election.

Mr Bush has lately found many of his rationales for the war being challenged. Just as Dr Kay has undermined the WMD rationale, a report published by the Army War College challenged the notion that the war in Iraq was part of the overall war on terrorism, and Human Rights Watch has disputed Mr Bush's notion that the Iraq war was a humanitarian mission.

Vice-President Dick Cheney has implicitly acknowledged that the war has not spurred peace in the Middle East, saying peace is not possible while Yasser Arafat remains in power.

To all of these challenges, though, there is a simple solution for Mr Bush. If the on-the-ground situation improves in Iraq, with violence abating and US troops returning home, Americans will almost certainly forgive any flaws in the rationale for going to war.